


Let the Wrong One In

by iwastheclown



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Cognitive Dissonance, Hannibal Lecter is a Cannibal, Hannibal is a drama queen, M/M, Oral Fixation, Thanksgiving Dinner, Unresolved Sexual Tension, but there is, its not... its not exactly Hannigram alright, season 2 time, whats the meat Hannibal?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:21:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27908926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwastheclown/pseuds/iwastheclown
Summary: Hannibal stood in the middle, a slice of black walking on the surface. He rose up and dropped the leaves in the bag. “I would enjoy having you for Thanksgiving this evening,” he called back.“Having or hosting?”Will had pulled a smile out of him for the second time that night. It snuck up on his reptilian profile even as Hannibal was turned away, adjusting the level of leaves in the bag. “I don’t catch your meaning.”The boys rake leaves and have a very tense Thanksgiving dinner. **Takes place in the middle of season 2**
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	Let the Wrong One In

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not dead, promise. Just forgot how to write for a sec.

How Jack Crawford managed to get the day off was beyond Will. Not just because of the recent madness, but Will was impressed Jack had managed to let himself relax. Will vaguely remembered being told he should also take the day off and spend Thanksgiving with the Crawfords, but that was a while ago, and it was buried under the mountain of all his other priorities. After nearly being framed as the Copycat, finding Miriam Lasser alive against all expectations, and nearly murdering a social worker sewn into a horse, it had been a long past month. Thanksgiving day blew in with the leaves turning on his front porch, and the only thing to remind Will of it was Jack’s absence at work that morning.

It was one of those rare slow days, and Will spent every hour at his office waiting for a crime scene to pop up on his radar. It never happened. Few people bothered him with any other work. Few people wanted to talk to him at all, which he was fine with. Somewhere in the afternoon, Will shut his computer after making a sizable dent in the minor projects eating away at him and decided to get a cup of coffee. But as soon as he stepped out of the building and onto the campus lawn, he stopped short. The door clicked shut behind him. He looked up, and he could have sworn the cloudy sky was dead still. Unmoving. The earth had stopped turning around him.

He went on to get his coffee anyway and came back, rolling his thumb in the rigid edges of the change in his pocket. He was dissociating, walking up a piece of sidewalk until something black caught his eye he could’ve sworn wasn’t there earlier. To his side, a dead crow laid right in the middle of a patch of grass, as out-of-place as if it were planted there. Will veered off the sidewalk and knelt down to examine it. It was in the first stages of rigor mortis, clear by the way its tattered wings were frozen stiff and pressed to its sides in a cold cocoon. It laid on its stomach with its head turned sideways and eyes frozen open, to glance at what had killed it from behind. Will looked up, but there were no trees directly above them. Only clouds doused in sunlight, swirling in the grey depths as cream in coffee. The crow seemed to have dropped straight out of heaven.

Time crept by so quietly under Will’s door that when he glanced at the time, he was surprised to see it was already four. He’d had to deal with a small issue in the past few hours, but there were no reports and no calls calling him to a new case. His cellphone remained unused, sitting on the desk of the empty temp office Jack lent him until they found him somewhere more permanent. Will had insisted on windows. Having no view of the outside from his current office, he was convinced, wasn’t helping his mental state. Hannibal agreed. _Hannibal._

Will exhaled a deep breath and his chair creaked under the weight of his back settling. When his breathing fell silent, so did everything else, unusual when he was so used to chatterbox walls whispering all his anxieties to him. Any other day they might be going wild about the fact Will had nearly murdered a man just a day earlier. A part of him even wished he’d gone through with it, but the walls said nothing on the subject. Perhaps, Will figured, that was part of the stillness he’d felt since that morning, and he couldn’t figure whether it was an absence of insanity or empathy. Either way, the trees weren’t speaking to him anymore.

Will checked the time one more time on his wrist, then gathered up his computer and binders and left to work the rest of the day from home.

He messaged Jack just to make sure it was alright, but he had already let the important people know and was halfway home by the time Jack replied with his okay. Normally Will wasn’t so careless, but any worry of this being irresponsible rolled right off his shoulders—oddly relaxed as they were that day. (He never thought he’d navigated the curves of the woodland road so smoothly.) In the next message vibrating on the passenger seat, Jack reminded Will that they still had an empty chair at his table, if he was at all thinking it over. Will declined.

His mind was far busier with the crow. He reimagined the way its eyelids peeled back against its small head, and the look in its eyes as it glared back at whatever had killed it. It’d captured death in its last moments, somewhere in the light-sensitive neurons in its brain. He hadn’t bent down enough to see its pupils that close, but he knew no matter how long or deep he could’ve stared, all he’d ever find was an undeveloped polaroid.

Will reread the time glowing in red numbers next to his radio—on but silent. It occurred to him for the first time that day he’d have to see Hannibal at seven. Technically Wolf Trap was somewhat on the way to Baltimore, but it was enough out of the way that Will didn’t see it being worth it to stop home only to leave again soon after. A piece of him was hoping to just miss the appointment entirely, with or without a warning call. Will was far too tempted to make Dr. Lecter drive to his office on a holiday and sit in that armchair waiting, for minutes and perhaps the next hour, only to find the air cold and empty without his patient’s presence. Likely it wouldn’t make him angry, if such a thing was even possible. But the silence would be more deafening than normal. It might kill him.

But Will drove to Baltimore anyway. When Hannibal looked him in the eyes the day before, after Will pulled the trigger, he’d stolen something from him. And Will wanted it back.

Fingers of blue clouds tore at the sky as he crossed the cityline, hours before his appointment was to start, and just as the sun began to set. He drove around for another twenty minutes, meandering around the suburbs. The wheels crunched over sheets of brown leaves lying across the streets. Will’s palms fused to the leather of his steering wheel until he barely felt them anymore, right up to the moment he found himself parking at Hannibal’s curb. Perhaps a death impulse. But he got out of the car anyway, slipping his hands in his pockets when the cold hit his face. Most of the trees on the street were lush and still full of their orange-red colors, but the ones on Hannibal’s lawn seemed especially bare. Just a few sickly yellow leaves hung on to the charred limbs. Will followed their arms up to the sky.

What brought him back to earth was a distant shuffling not his own. He came to a stop before the curb and listened carefully until he was sure the rustling was coming from somewhere behind the house. So he made a detour onto the lawn and headed toward the side of the house. The sound grew louder as he made his way to the backyard.

When he turned the corner of the house he spotted Hannibal in a long black coat and gloves, arranging fallen leaves in a brown lawn bag. And by the time Will stepped into view, Hannibal’s stare was already waiting for him, deflating the possibility Will would ever see him before being seen himself.

A smile spread quietly across Hannibal’s face, barely there, as he straightened and brushed his coat clean. “Good afternoon,” he said.

“Good afternoon.”

“Were you hoping to reschedule tonight?”

“I guess so,” Will replied evenly. He leaned against the corner of his house, then crossed his arms and tucked his hands under his biceps to warm them a little. “It’s a slow day. I don’t think I know what to do with myself.”

“Is relaxing an option?”

“Of course not.” Will’s gaze wandered around the yard, holding Hannibal’s dark figure in his peripheral. The wind’s absence only meant there was nothing to snatch their words from the vast space between them. Even with the distance, Hannibal sounded as clear as if they were in the vacuum space of his office. “The trees aren’t speaking to me anymore.”

Hannibal hardly reacted. He slid his hands in his coat pockets. “The trees?” he asked.

“The trees.” Will smiled wryly, so twisted it didn’t feel like a smile. “What, you don’t also hear the voices?” He gestured wildly around his head.

“I only hear one voice.” Hannibal paused, and added, with the lilt of amusement in his voice, “Two, now.” He walked a distance and knelt again to collect some leaves between his hands.

Will watched him. It was so odd seeing Hannibal do menial lawn work but he kept trying to wrap his head around the concept, studying the way Hannibal knelt to the ground and gathered fallen leaves in his arms. It looked almost human. And Hannibal didn’t seem to mind being watched. Based on what Will saw, he was methodically working his way left to right, creating pyramidal piles along the way so he could later come back and scoop all the leaves away at once. What remained was a sea of untouched leaves dissolving into waves across the yard, meeting a seashore of bare grass. And one black figure navigating his way around the scene.

Hannibal rose up and dropped one armful in the bag. “I would enjoy having you for Thanksgiving this evening,” he called back.

“Having or hosting?”

Will had pulled a smile out of him for the second time that night. It snuck up on Hannibal’s reptilian profile even as he was turned away, adjusting the level of leaves in the bag. “I don’t catch your meaning,” he replied, nonchalant. “But you’re welcome to help, if you’re looking for something to occupy your time.” With those last words, he looked straight at Will and they made eye contact across the sea. Will didn’t budge. His hand was gripping a piece of his flannel shirt under his arm. He was still enough a crow would have taken him from a straw man and landed on his shoulder.

“Sure,” he replied stiffly, and leaned off the wall. The invisible birds on his shoulders scattered into the frigid air. Hannibal walked toward the patio, where he had an extra pair of gloves.

Will didn’t think he needed gloves, but he slipped them on anyway, and began chipping away at a few leaf piles Hannibal had pre-raked across the yard. Evening devoured the sky as they worked. Orange and yellow lights in the few houses down the block began to light up in anticipation of the aggressive winter night.

Their paths winded around each other occasionally when they both went to the bag to place their share of leaves, but mostly they continued on in silence. Will paused, surveying a pile that was falling apart a bit, and left to take up an extra rake leaning beside the back door.

“How do you normally spend your Thanksgivings?” Hannibal asked.

“I’ve gone to Jack’s a few times. Usually I stay home.” Will turned the rake over in his leather palm and headed back across the lawn. Its firmness was somewhat satisfying to grip in his palm. “I’ve never had a taste for it.” He paused, then chuckled dryly. “Maybe it’s the turkey.”

“Could it be the concept of a family dinner?”

“A little heavy-handed for you, don’t you think?” The rake’s teeth wobbled as they scraped the ground. Meanwhile Hannibal’s eyes were still on the back of his head, where Will could feel stray bits of leaves stuck in his hair, but he chose not to acknowledge either one. After the pile was neat again he stopped, exhaling some air he’d held in his lungs for several hours. Then he took the rake in both hands and plunged it into the pile, not hard enough to make it crumple, but just deep enough to reach the center. The rake sunk in up to the wooden handle with a little effort.

Behind him, Hannibal was watching Will penetrate his design.

Will drew it out again, having felt nothing but the soft give of leaves all the way through, and the pile fell apart around his shoes. “Checking for a body,” he explained, over his shoulder.

“Perhaps you should search a different yard.”

Will chuckled, despite himself.

About an hour passed, and his body adjusted to the motion of raking leaves into neat piles and loading them into the bag. They exchanged one bag for another and rolled up the tops of each one. After a while it became muscle memory. Eventually Will broke the monotony to straighten up with a sigh, rest a hand on his hip and look off into the horizon. The sun had emerged as a last, piercing ray of orange falling over the trees, so bright he had to squint in its direction. The rays fell over his arms and manifested as blurry lights in his glasses when he glanced away. Out of nowhere, Will decided to take off his gloves and stick them in one pocket. The cold met his bare skin ruthlessly as the sun sank farther into the treetops, but he didn’t mind. The rake felt firmer in his palm.

Eventually they took a break for coffee and sat on Hannibal’s back porch watching the last bits of orange sucked away by the evening. The porch lights to Hannibal’s house turned on automatically around that time and Will saw their reflections glinting in his mug.

“You’re welcome to stay for dinner.”

It was easier to talk to Hannibal if he didn’t look at him. Without a face, the words came out of thin air and Will wouldn’t have to attach the voice to the identity. Maybe similar to what Miriam Lasser felt.

“No thanks.”

Will had left his gloves off, and now watched how his hands wrapped around the green mug. Submerged for so long in the cold, they were growing grey. A small smile peeked behind the blinds of his dissociation.

“I saw a dead crow this afternoon,” he muttered. He traced the curve of the handle with his thumb. “It was looking over its shoulder, like something had killed it from behind. But there were no teeth marks or blood that I could see; like it died of shock... and just dropped.”

“Crows often symbolize death, when they’re alive. But what kills death?”

“What kills death?” The echo rolled right off Will’s lips without his thinking, and he looked up from his cup at the dark blue yard before him. He felt its heaviness descending over him, lying on his chest, but it also beckoned to him. His body surrendered to the call before he even made the decision. After barely a sip or two, he was setting his coffee down on the table and returning to where his rake lay against a pile. From there he could only see off the porch lights as weak glints of orange off the leaves. But it was so cleansing, that back and forth motion of rowing his way across the autumn sea, and he did it for so long and so instinctively he became addicted to the clarity of it. Everything he breathed was sharper. His muscles devoured the movement, and they worked the murder out of his fingers. Hannibal joined him not that much later, working in the same paralytic state, even though for him it was nothing out of the ordinary.

They went inside another hour later and Will ambled mindlessly around the house, holding a glass of wine Hannibal had poured for him before he wandered off. The smell of cooking meat drifted faintly up the staircase while Will ascended it. He made his way through the dimly lit halls, paralleled by oil paintings and small modern art pieces he didn’t even try to interpret. Before long he found himself in the library.

Bookcases towered above his head, cruel mockings of trees, and a yellow lamplight motioned him to a small arrangement of armchairs. He could have found a wall light if he tried, but his eyes were adjusting quickly to every environment he found himself in. He was walking past the shelves when something struck him out of the blue and he stopped where his body told him to stop. He reached out and lifted a random book out of its place to read the cover. _A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance_ , by Leon Festinger. Unbothered by how long dinner was going to take, or how long he had left to slip out the door before he was socially obligated to stay, Will sat down in an armchair with the book in his lap and flipped it open.

_It has frequently been implied, and sometimes even pointed out, that the individual strives toward consistency within himself._

_But persons are not always successful in explaining away or rationalizing inconsistencies to themselves. Under such circumstances—that is, in the presence of an inconsistency—there is psychological discomfort._

_Cognitive dissonance can be seen as an antecedent condition which leads to activity oriented toward dissonance reduction just as hunger leads to activity oriented toward hunger reduction._

_It seems clear that the person may encounter difficulties in trying to change either his behavior or his knowledge. And this, of course, is precisely the reason that dissonance, once created, may persist._

He couldn’t remember leaving the door cracked, but Hannibal appeared in the library some time later and approached the chair. He tilted his head slightly to see the cover, while Will went on reading the book in his lap.

“Cognitive dissonance,” Hannibal observed. “Would you like to borrow it?”

“I’m fine.”

“I’ve just finished preparing dinner. I would still be glad to dine _with_ you tonight, if you’d like to stay.”

Will folded the book shut with his finger to save his place, and glanced at the watch under his shirt cuff. He considered it for a moment, then gave a small exhale, and pushed himself up from his chair. “Alright,” he replied simply, and returned to the bookshelf. He slipped the book back in its place and then followed Hannibal out the door.

In the dining room, Will pulled the napkin over his lap and sat down for a rather strange Thanksgiving dinner. In addition to the floral arrangement on the mantle, there was a new centerpiece several seats down from him. Vines and rudbeckias tumbled out of two halves of a cracked pumpkin. While Will watched how the flora spilled like guts over the ornamental cloth, a shadow moved in his peripheral and suddenly there was a plate of food in front of him.

“This is venison tenderloin,” Hannibal told him, from behind. He walked around the table end to his seat and explained, “I’ve served it with a cranberry-wine sauce appropriate for the season and rosemary from my garden.”

“Simpler than I was expecting,” Will commented, as Hannibal took a seat directly across from him. They were at one end of the table, so the distance between them wasn’t too large to talk over. “There’s no French in that sentence.”

“C'est du filet de chevreuil,” Hannibal corrected. “Je l’ai servi avec une sauce aux canneberges, et au vin adaptée à la saison et au romarin de mon jardin.”

“That’s better.”

Will cut into one slice and, after giving it a short inspection, took the piece in his mouth. His eyes closed immediately, for full concentration. The texture slid over his tongue. Crystal-clear, savory flavors seeped out. He wondered if he had tasted anything so flawless in his life (of course, he would’ve never admitted it out loud.) It probably wasn’t. But this was probably how Hannibal tasted all his meals. Will opened his eyes and glanced up at Hannibal to see how he reacted to it, but Hannibal was already staring back at him. And he smiled.

Will waited quietly for him to elaborate on that smile, but Hannibal tucked it away as he looked down and cut into his meal, leaving them without an explanation. Will’s frown tightened as he went back to his dinner, working to seal his mouth shut.

A strong wind surged out of the earth as they ate, rising up from minor shifts in the plates right under their feet. They heard the trees’ few leaves chafing against each other, somewhere out in the dark untouched by the dim white lights in the dining room. And vice versa. Will was nearly finished with his dinner when a clink of a slightly different note caught his attention.

“Thanksgiving is a queer holiday,” Hannibal began, pushing his knife through the last piece of his venison.

Will rolled his eyes to himself. They’d almost lasted a full meal without a dramatic monologue.

“No matter how you celebrate it, underlying it is always a sense of unease,” Hannibal continued. “There is an expectation that we should be thankful for everything we have, and to be unconditionally forgiving of any conflicts that arise, even when forgiveness is not earned or deserved. And furthermore, this sugarcoated sentiment is founded upon a reminder of the mass murdering of millions of Native Americans. This is perhaps why I’ve made our meal a bit less baroque than usual. A feast doesn’t seem appropriate.”

“How moral of you,” Will replied dryly.

“I’m not interested in right and wrong.” Hannibal lifted the final piece of meat on his fork to dissect with the same detached gaze Will had. “It simply find it ironic that the mass culture replaces genocide with gluttony. A cognitive dissonance, you might say.”

Will found himself inexplicably chuckling. “You’re critiquing gluttony?”

“I don’t find myself gluttonous. I appreciate fine food, not large quantities of it.”

“Right.” Will drew his lips tight and nodded to his side. “You’re very particular about what you eat.”

Hannibal raised his eyebrows. “Shouldn’t we be particular about what we put in our bodies?” he asked. “You are what you eat, after all.” As swift as a killing blow, he finished the last piece of his meal.

“Is the reverse true as well? That you eat what you are?”

“Naturally.” Hannibal’s train of thought wandered while he swallowed, and eventually his gaze returned back to Will. He studied him thoughtfully and asked, “Wouldn’t you have liked to taste the crow?”

Will paused while he considered it. Then his lips twitched with a slight chuckle. “I know I might not be as cultured as you but my standards are actually a little higher than that.” He knew his voice stretched far and wide with distorted emotions when he was nervous, but he still couldn’t control it. To try and mask it he picked up his wine glass and swallowed the remaining sliver at the bottom.

“That's not what I mean, Will.” Hearing his name on Hannibal’s lips pulled Will’s attention out of dormancy, and as he was setting his empty glass down, he couldn’t help but glance up. Their stares locked before Will could stop it.

“You are what you eat, after all, so what would you like to be? A crow?” Hannibal paused. “Or perhaps you hunger for something more substantial.” He pulled his napkin from his lap and set it over the edge of the table. “Meatier.” He stood up.

Will assessed Hannibal as he rounded the table. A threat rang muffled in his unconscious, but something was strangling his common sense. He stayed where he was while his eyes trekked up Hannibal’s slim waist to his chest, the part of his collar from under his wine-red sweater. Hannibal came to a slow stop barely a foot away, casting a shadow over him from far above.

“What would you like to consume, Will?” he asked. His hand wandered up to Will’s face, and Will watched it with plenty of chances to move away, or slap it away, or jab his fork in it, but he took none of them. When it was clear Will wasn’t going to leave, the hand drifted ever closer until its thumb rested on his bottom lip.

Will felt his warm breath bounce back onto his tongue as Hannibal gently drew his thumb over the soft hills of Will’s mouth, slowly to the corner to feel where his fleshy cheek began, and back again. Their eyes were still locked when Hannibal’s thumb ventured inside Will’s mouth. There was a question posed on the ridges of Will’s teeth, in his eyes peering up into Hannibal’s, and his lips parted delicately around Hannibal’s finger. Then Will answered it, as he closed his eyes. Hannibal touched his thumb to the tip of Will’s tongue.

Will let him in.

The finger ventured further inside and pressed flat against Will’s tongue. In Will’s mind he detached the body from the man, and instead focused on the pure sensation of someone’s skin in his mouth. The appendage swept over his tongue and wandered to one side of his mouth, where it pressed against his molars. It pushed further back, stretching the side of Will’s mouth out as elastic and rolling over the wet pattern of his teeth. Again, again, again, harder each time like he was trying to retract them. Will only knew he’d breathed when hot air bounced off Hannibal’s skin. Nobody had ever felt the back of his mouth before. He couldn’t remember even feeling his own molars, even though he’d been using them just a minute earlier, but Hannibal was memorizing the inside of his mouth. He drew his thumb back over the rough mountain range of Will’s teeth, feeling out every dip and edge, then turning up to his top teeth and rubbing the sides of his canines.

Will felt his own breath again, hotter. He couldn’t tell if he was making sounds as he trembled. The thumb moved again, down the soft inside of Will’s gums, and Will heard himself definitely shudder that time. His eyes were still closed; there was only so much sensation he could handle at once. Nobody had felt his mouth so far back. Hannibal reached in further until the web of his hand nudged Will’s lip, and Will took him in. He would have allowed the hand to go all the way back into his throat, down his esophagus and into his chest, to pull his heart from where it pounded hard enough to bruise his ribs. But Hannibal pulled his thumb out, tracing the ridge of Will’s teeth one last time, and then leaving his lips to close weakly together.

The arm returned into Will’s space but lower, although he only saw it through his parted eyelids, to collect the plate on the table. Then Hannibal sucked his presence away entirely and walked back to his side.

Will watched him go, saying nothing. He set his elbows slowly and steadily on the table. His whole body was vibrating. His cheeks burned hot against his hands but the air next to him was uncomfortably bare.

Hannibal set his own plate on top of Will’s and the silverware clattered, lonely in between them. “Would you like to stay for dessert?” he asked.

Will’s lips stayed sealed as Hannibal walked around the table, back to the kitchen. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “What’s for dessert?”

From the other room, Hannibal’s voice echoed without a body. “It may be uncharacteristic of me, but I haven’t decided yet.”

Will took a glance back, resting his chin on his shoulder with his hands protectively clasped in front of his cheek. He rolled his tongue back against the molars Hannibal had felt, reminding himself someone’s finger had been inside him. From the kitchen, the sink water ran and then shut off. Hannibal probably wasn’t going to wash those dishes by hand; not now, before they had their last course. And Will’s wine glass still sat in front of him, with nothing in it but the reflection of the white lights on the walls. That meant Hannibal would be coming back soon, to collect his glass and his answer.  


Will self-consciously raised his hand to the back of his head. Sure enough, there were bits of leaves still stuck in his hair. He ruffled his hair until they fell out, dirtying the floor of Hannibal’s dining room floor, and suddenly Will bolted up. He pulled his coat from the back of his chair and draped it over his arm as he rushed out of the room. He’d disappeared just as he heard Hannibal reentering the room from behind him, perhaps catching a last glance, perhaps not. Either way he’d find the bits of leaves carrying his answer. Will was out of the front door within the next ten seconds, walking briskly to his car.

He spent that night lying in bed, with the patterns of trees shaking on his ceiling and his dogs guarding his legs, wondering what would have happened if he’d stayed for dessert. When the thoughts got too heavy, he tore the covers off. He went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth until his gums hurt.

**Author's Note:**

> I do want to start writing more now that I have a little bit more time, so... suggestions/prompts are welcome haha.


End file.
